A fine film of sweat coated me as I readjusted my robes.

“We should not have done that.” I told Iona.

She gave me one of her roguish grins, slipping her hand into mine, entwining her fingers with mine. She squeezed me, and I squeezed her back.

“But we did!”

I rolled my eyes and pulled her away from the changing room.

“Hang on!” Iona leaned back, snagging an outfit. “I liked this one!”

I rolled my eyes again, but waited a moment.

“Okay! Where to next, nibble-o-saurus?”

“Nibble-o-saurus! That was you!” I protested in outrage.

“Really? Cause I got this bruise right on my-”

“FINE!” I was burning up, then my brain cells realigned and clicked.

“Wait. I healed you of those!”

“Brrrpt? Brrpt BRPT!” Auri asked what we were doing, but then completely disregarded it to flap a flier in front of us.

Madam Maven’s Marvelous Millinery

For your custom-made women’s hats!

“Brrrpt?” Auri plaintively asked.

Iona and I traded looks, practically reading each other’s mind.

“Yeah! Let’s get you a hat!” Iona said, taking off. We left the store, spilling out into the larger mall complex that was the School’s one-stop place for everything that could be bought or sold.

Although, hmmm. This might be the perfect chance to get away, and do some shopping of my own. Iona’s birthday was coming up, and I wanted to make it a stunning event that she’d remember forever. Iona and Auri getting her a hat could be my chance to slip away, and do just that.

The arching hallways between stores allowed for throngs of students to move like schools of fishes, lurching from one store wanting their precious arcanite coins to the next. The entire area was indoors, and while people weren’t supposed to fly here, it was too easy for moving between levels, and, well. It was a bunch of students. Following dumb rules wasn’t high on the list. We were on the second level, able to look down, when Iona stopped, tightening her hand around mine. She squeezed so hard it was almost painful.

“Skinwalker.” She breathed, staring down below.

“You’re sure!?” I asked, mostly out of disbelief and not out of any doubt of Iona’s abilities. She could directly see the System, and couldn’t lie. Short of a clever illusionist casting a mirage at exactly the right time and place, Iona’s analysis was correct.

“Yes.”

I felt Iona’s weight shift, as her ever-present Mallium started to flow from her back, where she normally kept it, down her arms and legs, encasing her in armor while still looking like a witch from the outside.

“Who? And I know goblins are allowed to be here, is it possible that she’s just a student, trying to lay low?”

Iona hesitated, and pointed to another black hat that was wandering through the crowds.

“Him.” She said. “And maybe. The level doesn’t match the robes. 652.”

I checked the level.

[Laborer - 130]

I frowned at that. Even I had to wear purple robes, although I could disguise my level. My life would be easier with a hidden level. Fewer dirty looks from mortals.

“He’s using a disguise. Only showing up as 130. What do you want to do?” I had limited experience with skinwalkers, having only briefly encountered them in my zoology class. They were difficult to classify. All shapeshifters were. Iona had fought them before.

“Auri. Get some guards to meet us here. Elaine, let's politely ask him to wait for a moment.”

“Brrpt!” Auri practically saluted, then zipped off so quickly she left her hat behind. A conjured [Mage Hand] appeared, grabbed the hat, and zoomed off after Auri.

Iona let go of my hand, and jumped off the balcony. Nobody blinked an eye, and I followed a moment later.

As I fell, I quickly put together Iona’s plan. Have Auri get some guards, and confirm for Iona that the skinwalker was allowed. Stick with the skinwalker, to stop them from slipping away and vanishing. Ask them politely to hang around, and if the guards confirmed everything was fine, nobody would be any wiser. Their secret would be kept.

Iona nearly landed on some poor student who wasn’t paying attention, swerving in mid-air to gracefully land in an open spot, barely bending her knees to absorb the impact. I had to be a little flashier to avoid the same student, and while it was tempting to land on Iona’s shoulders like a trapeze artist, I didn’t think she’d appreciate the goofing off.

It wasn’t the time or the place.

Iona pushed her way through the crowd, following the black hat she’d marked. Her own purple robes helped split the crowd, although one jackass tried to shoulder her as she passed.

He landed on his ass as Iona kept moving, seemingly not noticing him at all. Her boots started to leave light marks on the floor - she was increasing her weight.

“Should I try to clear the crowd?” I asked Iona, uneasily looking at the sheer number of people here. We were in a mall, filled with civilians. The amount of potential collateral damage was making me nervous.

“Would you believe a student shouting to evacuate, and that there might be a monster here?” Iona asked me doubtfully, never turning to look back.

“... Good point. I’d just assume they’d been drinking a little too much, and call the guards. Either way, problem solved.”

“And Auri’s already on that.” Iona finished.

She reached out and clasped her hand on the wizard’s shoulder.

People moved around us, as Iona was like a rock in the river.

Iona trilled something in a language I’d never heard before. The woman - man? - eagerly looked up at Iona, trilling back, then looking around and gesturing.

Iona shook her head and trilled back, and the skinwalker looked scared, shrinking down into himself and shaking her - his? - head.

Iona’s helmet flowed onto her head, leaving just her jaw exposed, as her gloves and boots snapped on. The characteristic wings of Order Valkyrie popped up, completing the look. I put up my shield, gently expanding it to give us space as students protested us taking up the entire hall.

“HELP! HEEEELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!” The skinwalker started screaming. A few students and at least one professor started moving towards us, but Iona’s frown deepened, and I saw her grip on the skinwalker’s shoulder tighten.

She took a deep breath and bellowed, her words overpowering the frail woman’s screaming.

“Yee Naldlooshii here is a skinwalker! Clear out!”

Quite a lot of things happened quickly, my improved thinking speed from my companion bond with Auri coming in handy.

The witch shedded, her skin peeling in half right down the middle. The skin slumped to the ground as a polar bear erupted from the inside, ripping apart the flimsy witch’s robes he’d been wearing.

Iona had maintained her grip as the skinwalker shot up in size, already punching his head with her spike-knuckled gauntlets.

People started to scream and run away, but they were all so slow. I could move faster in a vat of jello.

The skinwalker wasted no time, paws larger than my head wrapping around Iona, trapping her arms and trying to crush her in a bear hug. I snapped my wings open, repositioning myself around Iona to blast Radiance through the skinwalker’s eyes.

I wasn’t going to try and dig through all the layers of a polar bear’s fur and fat just to hit the intestines. Not when there were eyes to boil and pop, brains to vaporize.

Iona opened her jaw wide, sinking her teeth into the skinwalker’s neck. She ripped her head away, spitting out a bloody chunk as arterial spray baptized the mall.

The screaming went up a few notches.

The skinwalker released his grip on Iona, the warrior kicking off his chest and doing a backflip to gain distance. As she tumbled through the air, the skinwalker neatly punched out with his paw, skewering Iona through the chest with his seven-inch claws. With a roar, he flung her to the side. The valkyrie was thrown so fast she blurred.

I had the presence of mind to drop my shield in the general direction she was thrown. There was no way my shield could take that sort of hit, I’d just blow a ton of mana for it to break anyways. I flew on an intercept course, arriving a moment after Iona left an imprint in the wall.

Massive internal trauma, dozens of broken bones, punctured lungs, perforated stomach, collapsed airways, skull fractured in a dozen places, and if I wasn’t mistaken, an entire chamber of her heart had gotten obliterated. I ignored her body being one massive bruise, that was a given, and it didn’t really matter that more of her blood was outside of her than inside.

That could’ve been bad without armor.

I tapped Iona, bringing her back to full health right as the bear roared at us, a wave of nasty red liquid crashing over us.

Iona shoved me out of the way, her armor twisting under her will as she moved to a full-head helmet, a weapon forming in her hand. A nice thing about Mallium was Iona could have no joints, her armor eggshell smooth all around. No holes for liquids to penetrate. I didn’t get to see what weapon she was forming before the supernaturally fast wave crashed over her.

The skinwalker had no thoughts about mitigating collateral damage, and the deadly acid splashed everywhere. I had a clear shot though, and I could multitask. I spared a quick thought to summon a beam of Radiance, again going for my classic ‘burn the brain through the eye socket’ move, while summoning my [Mantle of the Stars] along the weaker side of the chemical wave. I didn’t think I could stop the stronger side of the acid as it splashed and sprayed through the mall’s throughway. Instead, I launched myself over it, flying through the fine mist.

My clothes were eaten, burning away. Any acid that hit my skin sizzled and smoked, but I’d never dropped my [Persistent Casting]. I healed as quickly as my flesh melted.

I was going to be insufferable the next time Marcelle and I had one of our meetings.

My Radiance beam cleared straight through the skinwalker’s head, burning a black hole in the stone behind him.

No notification though.

Behind me, like a vengeful goddess, Iona exploded through the acid, wielding a glaive. The polar bear’s skin split in half and sloughed off, a triceratops emerging from the melting skin.

He lowered his horns and charged Iona. I snapped my head forward, away from the fight, and focused on the casualties.

The smart ones, the quick ones, had gotten out of the way enough. Most of them were still in the hall, running away - they weren’t that quick - but had dodged the bulk of the splash damage. I was left with the weak, low-leveled ones who’d gotten the worst of it. My aura, [Cosmic Presence], was always on and working. It was hard to point to any one thing my aura did, any one person it saved for sure, but it was putting in subtle, powerful work, a hundred tiny parts of the body already healing before I even touched anyone, reducing the cost of my healing.

It would be optimal if I could simply collapse the ceiling, letting sunlight stream in, and hit everyone with [Wheel of Sun and Moon] at once. I didn’t know how easily I could blast through the ceiling, how much mana it would take, what angle the sun was currently at, which parts of the mall would be lit up, the current cloud cover situation, or if falling debris would kill anyone, adding to the mess.

Hell, blasting the ceiling to pieces and killing someone with falling masonry was likely a major [Oath] violation.

No, I was fast enough to hit the victims before anyone died from their current injuries.

The first victim had gotten drenched. Her face was melting, and the stubs of her arms waved ineffectively as her hips were eaten by the acid. I imagined her legs were the patch of slightly discolored acid near her.

I ignored the screaming. Everyone was screaming.

Triage time.

I healed her up, which only did so much good as she was still sitting in a pool of acid. Her screams took on a different pitch as nerves were regrown, only to start life in agony.

Eh. She’d live, and right now that was my primary concern. I couldn’t guarantee that everyone would live, not without me putting forth my best effort. She’d gone from triage red, to triage green.

I darted from patient to victim, healing the worst of them while ignoring the ‘moderately’ injured ones. By my definition.

A crash came from behind, and I spared a moment’s attention to see what was happening. The triceratops had charged Iona, but my girlfriend dodged the attack, opening up triple bloody lines against his flank with a single strike of her glaive.

Totally a skill going on there.

One human roared and tried to grab me, I assumed to force me to heal him. He wasn’t that badly hurt, just a mild spray across his body. Getting tangled up could do worse things for me and everyone than simply ignoring him.

I jabbed out a punch at the grabby person, landing square on his face and breaking his nose. Critically, it also pushed him away from me, letting me continue to dart to the people I thought needed the attention now.

Sadly, it also healed him, rewarding the bad behavior.

A half-dozen people later, and I was diving back into the fray. The triceratops split, having turned into some tiny, high-speed flier. Iona’s glaive was terribly unsuited to hitting a zippy creature like that, and it flat-out went through her shoulder. Iona staggered as her arm went limp, but the skinwalker was now in range.

And Radiance was perfect for hitting high-speed targets. As long as I could see them, and they were close enough, I could hit them.

Instead of going for the eyes, my Radiance attack was large enough to entirely annihilate the skinwalker, and I tried to simply vaporize it whole. There was no coming back from getting turned to dust, right?

Sadly, that wasn’t the case, the monster almost instantly splitting off and shedding its latest skin. A little horned baby fell to the acid-coated ground, and started to wail. I reached Iona, flipping around so I’d land on her feet-first. My knees bent as I connected, pulsing my healing magic through her, and I springboarded off, giving her room to keep fighting.

I was hesitating to laser a baby to death. With my luck, the guards would come right as that happened and would jump to the natural conclusion.

Iona didn’t hesitate, splitting the infant in half with a single cleave of her weapon. The baby split again, shedding its skin as a monstrous allosaurus erupted from the remains, roaring and chomping down, attempting to bite Iona in half.

A green vine snaked through the mall so quickly, it was like it teleported into existence. A sharp crack followed it, and what glass there was in the mall blew inwards, turning into a deadly hail of razor-sharp pieces.

Greenery exploded all over the mall. A tree grew to support the second floor, which was threatening to fall over. Leaves covered the acidic pools, wilting as they absorbed and neutralized it. Bushes exploded out of windows, growing fast enough to catch all of the glass shards before they rained down on people cowering in stores. Fine vines, smaller than the lines on my skin, wrapped around me. They were entirely unyielding, and held me in place. I could only move my eyes. I saw that Iona, the skinwalker, and a few students who were trying to flee had been similarly restrained. A flower, larger than a person, bloomed at the end.

Out of the flower stepped a sprightly, elderly woman in white robes. My blood ran cold as I threw an [Identify] her way.

[Artisan - 3584].

“Begone.” My heart skipped a beat as she spoke in Creation with an achingly familiar accent, and the skinwalker simply dissolved into a flurry of flower petals, a breeze coming from nowhere and scattering the monster to the winds.

[*ding!* Your party has slain a [With it, He Goes On All Fours (Forest - 652), Like a Tide He Comes, Scouring the Land (Acid - 611), Where it Skitters, Hunger Follows (Void - 577)]!]

The lady looked around with crossed arms, one finger tapping unhappily on her robes as she slowly turned. A dozen flowers sprouted from her feet, blooming with an explosion of pollen, and a breeze scattered the spores throughout the building.

She took one more look around, and stepped back into her flower. The vine vanished so quickly I heard the air crack behind it.

Iona and I looked at each other, right as Auri trumpeted her arrival with the guards.

“What the fuck.” I said.

A second Classer popped in through the ceiling, parts of the roof melting to let him in. He was wearing yellow robes, and Iona glanced up at him, her helmet melting away.

With a wave, all the remaining Acid laying around the mall zipped up to him, forming a neat ball floating in front of the elf. With a second gesture, the Acid vanished.

The guards were still moving through as Iona waved the elf down. She started babbling in High Elvish.

“You were at the Wobby pass! With the goblins! You saved us, I never got a chance to say thank you, I’ve never forgotten that day, I-”

I didn’t get a chance to hear the rest as the guards ushered me away.

The guards took control of the situation, and Iona and I both needed to spend a lot of time explaining ourselves to the guards. A letter, written on fresh bark and delivered by a blooming flower, took care of most of the issues, and everything from there was variations of “what were you thinking” and “leave it to the professionals” and other such nonsense.

I tended to like guards, but these ones were getting on my nerves. I missed being able to flash my badge and make the pesky problems go away.

I did get some levels though!

[*ding!* Congratulations! [Butterfly Mystic] has leveled up to level 369->370! +8 Strength, +8 Dexterity, +70 Speed, +70 Vitality, +70 Mana, +70 Mana Regen, +70 Magic power, +70 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Free Stat for being Human per level! +1 Strength, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]

[*ding!* [Celestial Affinity] leveled up! 512 -> 513]

FINALLY capped the skill again.

[*ding!* [Cosmic Presence] leveled up! 318 -> 319]

I still believed in the skill, it just hadn’t gotten the right time and place to shine. Of course the moment I took the skill and left a warzone I wouldn’t find myself in one again.

[*ding!* [Center of the Universe] leveled up! 454 -> 457]

Thank the System for my anti-pain skill, I would’ve been a screaming mess with all the little acid droplets.

[*ding!* [Mantle of the Stars] leveled up! 473 -> 474]

Save a mall full of people, get one level. Yaaaaaay.

[*ding!* [Spotless] leveled up! 32 -> 70]

That was more like it, but [Spotless] was a shit [Pretty] substitute. I wasn’t happy with it. I was strongly leaning towards dumping the skill entirely, and trying again with something new. The only thing holding me back was I wanted to work out my third class first, to see what holes or synergies I might want to cover.

[*ding!* [Persistent Casting] leveled up! 350 -> 352]

Figuring out how to upgrade my skill was on my todo list. I knew there were classes around metaskills like [Persistent Casting], but other classes had taken priority. I didn’t want to burn out again.

After chatting with the guards for what felt like an eternity, I was finally free to go.

“Between you and me.” The guardswoman who’d been interrogating me leaned forward across the table. “Thank you. You saved more lives than I thought was possible for an incident like this. Please, swing by any time!”

With that, she got up and left, and I was left with a warm glow. Another person in black robes came in, and sat down at the table across from me. I stifled a groan.

Now what?

“Hi, I’m from the student council, and -”

“Nope. Not interested. I’m off to kiss my girlfriend. Bye.” I ignored the outraged sputtering from the student, striding out of the room on a quest to find Iona.

I was going to get some kisses, then I was going to find Marcelle.

I couldn’t wait to rub it in.

[Name: Elaine]

[Race: Human]

[Age: 22]

[Mana: 591,690/591,690]

[Mana Regen: 282,222 (+548,368)]

Stats

[Free Stats: 361]

[Strength: 1,078]

[Dexterity: 2,161]

[Vitality: 15,390]

[Speed: 15,422]

[Mana: 59,169]

[Mana Regeneration: 59,283 (+54,837)]

[Magic Power: 23,824 (+611,086)]

[Magic Control: 23,851 (+611,778)]

[Class 1: [The Dawn Sentinel - Celestial: Lv 513]]

[Celestial Affinity: 513]

[Cosmic Presence: 319]

[The Stars Never Fade: 11]

[Center of the Universe: 457]

[Dance with the Heavens: 513]

[Wheel of Sun and Moon: 513]

[Mantle of the Stars: 474]

[Sunrise: 430]

[Class 2: [Butterfly Mystic - Radiance: Lv 370]]

[Radiance Affinity: 370]

[Radiance Resistance: 370]

[Radiance Conjuration: 370]

[Runic Scribing: 77]

[Nectar: 370]

[Solar Corona: 370]

[Scintillating Ascent: 370]

[Kaleidoscope: 370]

[Class 3: [Student of the Ages - Wood: Lv 32]]

[Wood Affinity: 32]

[Learning Languages: 32]

[Dabble: 32]

[Something Doesn't Look Right: 32]

[Timekeeping: 32]

[Organization: 32]

[Repetition is the Mother of Learning: 32]

[Study: 32]

General Skills

[Long-Range Identify: 376]

[Immortal Recollections: 305]

[Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri: 128]

[Spotless: 70]

[Oath of Elaine to Lyra: 513]

[Sentinel's Superiority: 513]

[Persistent Casting: 352]

[Passionate Learning: 420]